But the bushes had closed again around him, and the glimmer of the dying fire no longer fell upon the barbarian. With an audacity of daring that marked the eagerness and intensity of his curiosity, Nathan with his hands pushed the bushes aside, so as again to bring a gleam upon the swarthy countenance; which he perused with such feelings as left him for a time unconscious of the object of his enterprise, unconscious of everything save the spectacle before him, the embodied representation of features which events of former years had painted in indelible hues on his remembrance. The face was that of a warrior, worn with years, and covered with such scars as could be boasted only by one of the most distinguished men of the tribe. Deep seams also marked the naked chest of the sleeper; and there was something in the appearance of his garments of dressed hides, which, though squalid enough, were garnished with multitudes of silver brooches and tufts of human hair, with here and there a broad Spanish dollar looped ostentatiously to the skin, to prove he was anything but a common brave. To each ear was attached a string of silver coins, strung together in regular gradation from the largest to the smallest,--a profusion of wealth which could appertain only to a chief. To prove, indeed, that he was no less, there was visible upon his head, secured to the tiara, or _glory_, as it might be called (for such is its figure) of badgers' hairs, which is so often found woven around the scalp-lock of a North-western Indian, an ornament consisting of the beaks and claws of a buzzard, and some dozen or more of its sable feathers. These, as Nathan had previously told the soldier, were the distinguishing badges of Wenonga, or the Black-Vulture (for so the name is translated); and it was no less a man than Wenonga himself, the oldest, most famous, and, at one time, the most powerful chief of his tribe, who thus lay, a wretched, squalid sot, before the doors of his own wigwam, which he had been unable to reach. Such was Wenonga; such were many of the bravest and most distinguished of his truly unfortunate race, who exchanged their lands, their fathers' graves, and the lives of their people, for the doubtful celebrity which the white man is so easily disposed to allow them.